Papillon Mordant
by RamblerGaelige
Summary: Not really a direct fanfic on Moulin Rouge, but takes place in a similar time and place...
1. Default Chapter

A WHORE'S SCENT, of absinthe and cheap perfume, sweat and ovveripe fruit, of Gitane cigarettes and face-powder, and under it all, lurking, brooding, winding itself like a chahuteuse through the air, the smell of fever. A whore's clothes as well, tattered silks and brocades, purchased from the dingy little shop in the Place des Vosges, a cluttered hole where the odour of dust and age reigns supreme and overpowers everything.

Time passes slowly up here on the Hill; the rest of Paris doesn't care enough to brave the staircases and bring us into Progress. Everything about me, every outward aspect of my life, reeks of the whore. This is my life; to sleep in a drunken haze from dawn until the sun disappears behind the domes of Sacre-Coeur; to awaken at the first faltering notes of the organ-grinders disjointed melodies; then and only then to emerge from my threadbare chrysalis of ancient Havana shawls, to reluctantly raise my head from the satin pillow, worn dull with use and the grease of my hair. It once was a deep, brilliant yellow, but is now a dingy, greenish colour - it seems that everyone and everything that ends up on the hill ends up the same way.

We are born young, full of hope, full of fervour for the bohemian ideals of Freedom, Beauty, Truth, and Love - we die in bitter disappointment. Freedom is a prison from which there is no escape and no hope of release. Beauty is a flock of aging prostitutes, the pits on their cheeks covered over with white paste and rouge, their hair dyed an outrageous shade of red or yellow, who bat their sooty eyelashes from dimly lit doorways and exhale fetid breath, heavily tinged with smoke and bad teeth and more oft than not with the consumption.

Truth - the only truth of the Hill is that of misery, poverty, and death. We are born, we suffer immensely for a few brief glimmers of happiness, and we die. Our souls may rot in Hell or Purgatory - not one has faith enough to hope for heaven, with the possible exception of the priests who serve our Basilica. The Montmartre grave-yard claims our bones, though none may be certain where dear friends lie - only a very few are well-enough off to afford a headstone. And Love - others may believe that the bohemians of the Hill are free to love whomever they shall choose, but it is not so. I cannot love any man - there is no point in it. They come to me, I lie with them, they pay me, they leave. I hardly see their faces, more rarely so learn their names. None spend even a night with me - an hour at most, just long enough for what one might call a "business transaction".

This is my life - to sleep, to wake, to go out on the streets every night and bring back at least five men, one at a time, to this same rusty, dusty, rumpled little iron bed where I sleep during the day. Five francs from each one makes twenty-five - that's enough to live upon. Six times during the week I do this - one hundred fifty francs a week - fifty two weeks in a year makes seven thousand eight hundred francs. I can no longer recall when first I began work - all the endless days, weeks, months and years have run together, one endless and brutal carnival of sex and drunkenness and sickness. The "sparrows" of the Hill work every day except Sunday - and those days when we must visit old Rienne at the Moulin. Her name might mean Nothing, but to us she is certainly Something - most of us, myself included, have lain on her table and felt the sharp end of her crowbar in a delicate place often enough to no longer need her services. To us it is a boon and a blessing. If any of us were to bear a child, it would mean the end of our working years and the start of slow, painful starvation.

I think every so often on what became of Adele Buissonet, four or five years ago. Poor creature - she refused the offers of help that old Rienne and the rest of us made, and bore a tiny girl, a pitiful creature with the blue eyes and weak constitution of her mother. I see Adele once in a great while - she is a laundress now, married to a hulking brute of a drunkard who beats her - anybody with half an eye could see the bruises on her arms, obscured though they are with soap-suds and lye-rash. Her child clings like a skinny, frightened doll to the skirts of her mother, forever whimpering with hunger. It breaks my heart to see it - if little Celeste survives her childhood, she will turn fifteen and choose the same course as endless generations before her have done - Celeste will lift up her skirts for five francs a man, for as long as her beauty lasts, simply to stave off starvation. She will become intimate with old Rienne, and all the ways of the Hill.

This is our life. For us, there is no way of escape. We are born, we age beneath a coat of disguising paint, we decline faster than the trains come into the Gare St Lazare, and we die.

Dusk. Through the dingy, bubbled glass of the one small window my room affords, I can see the sun expiring in one last blaze of glory over Sacre-Coeur. I can pick out its colours in my room - the red of my best dress, bought for three francs in the Place des Vosge, its splendour marred only by a missing button; the brilliant deep gold of my pillow when it was new; last of all, and palest, an acidic green, the green of my solace, absinthe. The last green light of the day signals the sparrows of the Mount to emerge from hiding. I am still in my ratty and grimy deshabille...

I have smeared paint over my face so many times that I know its contours by heart. There is my brow-bone; white goes there; my lips, scarlet; my eyelids, dark violet; my cheeks receive the same scarlet paste as my mouth. It is a ghoulish and garish mask, though without it my sickness shows - without it no man would want me. I am only rising twenty-one; I look thirty. When I am thirty I will be too old to work anymore. I don't believe that I shall see that age anyhow. The consumption will take me long before.

There; I have finished; I hook the last button at the point of my bodice. The jet rosette makes a nice contrast against the deep red of the velvet, I think - the missing button is neatly hidden by an enameled brooch. A last glance in the dirty and speckled mirror; I pin a dingy and somewhat crushed paper rose into my hair and, feeling myself ready for the night, slip out the door and into the crush of the street below.


	2. Chapter 2

I am not one of your doorway prostitutes, too old and too withered to venture past a shadowed entryway. My territory is the eastern edge of the Place Des Vosges, four blocks over and two down from my upstairs flat behind the grave-yard. Every working night, I run down the great flights of stairs - such a pain, in French heels, but I am a small woman and I must wear them - and back up, twice for each customer that comes my way.

This night I am more out of breath than usual from the exertions, and I must sit for nearly five minutes to catch my breath, before arranging my blood-coloured (but actually bloodless) lips into the sweet, simpleton smile of the professional coquette. Every man in the square resembles the other; hundreds of replications of the same beast. Vosges could be the dwelling of a many-headed monster, desiring only to feed upon the dispensable flesh of the sparrows.

Ah; there is a weight upon the bench besides my own. I glance up, fluttering my eyelids delicately, then frankly stare, shocked to my bones. "Adele!! What are you doing here?" I press her hand between my own, then remember. "Where is Serge?" Adele's white-caked face is split suddenly by a crimson gash. "Dead!! The bastard is dead, Marie, may he rot in Hell!! He was run over by an express at St Lazare last week-end."

Is this cruel of Adele, to think so ill of her husband? Not in the slightest. He made her miserable and whored around besides. Ah, but there is something the matter. Adele's manic grin has not reached her eyes; they are dull and expressionless as two lumps of coal in the snow.

"Why, what is making you sad, Adele?" Her lips tremble for a moment, mashed together like two bricks as she tries to contain herself. At last she gives it up and buries her head in my shoulder, sobbing, though not as if her heart would break - it is quite clearly already broken. I take her head in my hands, seeing their shocking blue and white against the russet of Adele's hair. "Whatever is the matter?" I raise her face on a level with my own, and hand her my torn and violet-smelling handkerchief. Adele dabs at her eyes with it; she has shed a great deal of her make-up along with her tears. "Last month -" She gulps futilely. "Celeste-"

Adele need say no more, I have already divined her meaning. Little Celeste has died; her blue eyes and chestnut hair will never earn her living. Montmartre is strange; what would be a tragedy in any sane locale is often a blessing here. Celeste is with the angels, where a little girl belongs; she will never know the indignity of selling her body for her bread. Through my whirling thoughts I hear Adele's muffled, glottal bursts of speech. "It was- the- the- influenza... She n-never ha-a-ad a chance."

Adele is ghastly under the gaslamps; her blue dress is a strange and violent shade of green. The violet circles smeared round her eyes and the lopsided carmine gash of her lips give her the appearance of some bloodsucking ghoul out of the catacombs. I lick my thumbs and put her make-up somewhat to rights; she never was very pretty in the greasepaint, poor girl, but she will do. Impulsively we embrace; then, embarrassed, separate. Not a moment must be wasted; each of us must earn our twenty-five francs tonight or starve on the morrow. Quickly we mutter our farewells. There is business to do.


End file.
